You Know:
If it means anything to you coming from me, I have to give credit where it’s due. When you drop the histrionics and write like this, you make the only biblically viable case for explaining the condition of the WTS today.
As I’ve said before, several of the old timers that I knew had come to the same conclusions as yourself, and before I stopped attending meetings this was the only argument (in the scriptures you mention) I could personally conceive of to account for what I saw going on around me. “Watchtowerites” – we had coined the same term. These were the ones that would burble any nonsense that was found on the printed page of a WT as if fallen from the lips of God himself. They’ve put their trust solely in men, because they don’t have the intellect (or spirituality?) to consider any independent course of thought, no matter how obviously flawed the current, head in the sand teachings of the org are. The concept of salvation in the collective “ark,” (leaky as it is) as opposed to individually standing before their master is just to ingrained to overcome.
Where I couldn’t make it work was the numbers. If 90% of the dubs go down the drain, and only the remaining ones were to be saved, it left me with the impression that Jehovah’s plan of recovering mankind had failed miserably, and the ransom was wasted. I know there are many ways of justifying this, but I got tired of playing that game.
In any case, financial calamity or not, I expect to see major schisms in the Society in the near future. As Alan aptly noted, they are completely ossified intellectually, and cannot adapt to changing circumstances; therefore circumstances will overtake them. I honestly believe that they thought all along that Jehovah would intervene before this point in time, and bring Armageddon, just to save them the embarrassment of their failed illusions. It’s their own fault for killing the few “men of words” still left in their ranks. But I digress . . . what I wanted to say was that at least one of these schisms will likely develop around the ideas you’re presenting here. Ideas such as yours are gaining some ground amongst the disgusted (but still loyal).
Time will tell. What does it all mean anyhow?
And Alan, while I usually enjoy your posts, and I appreciate the effort put into them – in this case, who cares if the old Judge was a confirmed drunk or not? Or if he had a mistress? Hasn’t this been played out? Is it relevant? I did recognize though your connecting the current mentality to the years of abuse suffered under his inebriated hand. Yes, as I think back on his many books that I read (and enjoyed at the time) I see now the haze of alcohol that gave rise to his flights of fancy. The whole thing is just so damn pathetic.